Lodi senior flying high despite being grounded

Fittingly, the Lodi High senior has used the high jump as a means to stabilize his life.

Along with other area track and field standouts, Nikzat will compete in today's 29th annual Sacramento Meet of Champions at Sacramento City College's Hughes Stadium.

Nikzat recently accepted a full track scholarship to Cal State Stanislaus next year. And though his life will continue down a common path, he's overcome long odds to realize that normalcy.

He's jumped from a broken family living in a car to bouncing around California's foster care system to landing in Lodi, living with his older brother while becoming one of the state's top high jumpers.

"I know that if you don't have the money and you don't have the time, you can't make it in baseball anymore," Lodi head track coach Greg Wright said. "Track and field is a sport where we can take kids that haven't had the blessings a lot of us had, and they can make it here."

Even his path at Lodi has been uneven.

His track career was born, in a sense, out of delinquency.

"Getting Ray out is a funny story," said Robert Winter-halter, one of Nikzat's two jumping coaches.

Winterhalter, an English teacher, noticed Nikzat wasn't in class. He was outside dunking basketballs.

"I said, 'Ray, you have two choices: One, I write you up for ditching my class, or two, you come out for the track team.' "

Originally, he was going to run distance events, but that changed once he discovered his love for defying gravity.

"I saw some kids doing the high jump, and I was in basketball shoes and street clothes," he said. "I said, 'This looks like fun.' "

Nikzat quickly cleared what the seasoned jumpers were trying to eclipse.

"They told me how good I was, and I thought they were joking around," he said. "The coach figured the high jump was probably going to be my thing."

It's been his thing for three years. By the end of his first season, he was clearing 6 feet, 2 inches, a school record for sophomores.

His junior season ended with a Sac-Joaquin Section championship and a ninth-place finish at the California State Track and Field Championships, both at Hughes Stadium. He cleared 6-8 at sections, still his best.

It was a rewarding conclusion to a chaotic junior year. After five years with the same Lodi family, Nikzat was sent to Sacramento when his foster parents bought a restaurant and no longer had the time to provide adequate care.

His biological brother, Farhad, now 20 and married, settled in an apartment in Lodi. After one semester at River City High, the courts allowed Ray to move back to Lodi and live under his brother's care.

Surprisingly, his troubled family history hasn't left him bitter. He has no contact with his natural mother, Deborah, who has been incarcerated for the past seven years.

"I accept that. I know she still loves me, and I still love her," he said. "But that's what it is, and I can't let that affect what I'm doing here. I'm trying to make something of myself."

His father, Farshad, moved to Florida about six years ago. He originally tried to keep Ray, Farhad and younger brother Abraham, now 15, together.

For months they lived in Farshad's car, parked at night at a rest area near Sacramento Metropolitan Airport. Without money for gas, the kids were kept out of school.

When Ray was 11, Farshad realized placing his kids in foster care was his best option.

"He talks about how his dad is still his hero," said Steve Yund, Nikzat's other jumping coach. "I'm scratching my head wondering how that can be. 'Well, he worked so hard to try to keep us together. He worked two jobs.' ... That's how he sees it."

Nikzat will begin working toward his long-term goals when he starts college in the fall. For now, he just wants to better the 6-8 he jumped at sections last year and has repeated this year.

"Hopefully, I can gain a few more inches," he said. "I don't really have a set height. I keep those things to myself."